Why do you need to treat your luggage for bed bugs? Simple. If you happen to be staying in a place that has bedbugs, it's possible for them to hide in the seams of your luggage, which apparently is a favorite place for them to hide after feeding. This can happen in any kind of hotel (in my case, a good-quality business hotel I had stayed in many times before) and it can still happen even if you check the room for bed bugs. I checked, didn't find any, and was still bitten on the first night I was there.

Like my last project, this one uses heat to kill bedbugs. It's similar in operation to commercially available products like the Packtite (http://www.packtite.com/) using a heat source in a heat chamber to raise the temperature of items to 125F to kill bed bugs and their eggs.

There was a lot of discussion on my last project - someone called it a "Hacktite" - and people were concerned about the amount of wiring that was necessary and I was thinking about an improved version. Fortunately, inspiration struck while I was hanging my Christmas lights...

Why Christmas lights? I needed a heat source that could put out between 350-400 Watts of evenly distributed heat. Hotplates and hairdryers put out too much heat; and things like room heaters don't have thermostats that go up to 125F. Christmas lights are perfect for the job!

This is a simpler project than my last bedbug killing machine, it requires only the most basic home electrical skills. This version is cheaper, and for this one you don't even need to take a trip down that weird aisle fully of funny-looking connectors at the Home Improvement store for supplies since most "big box" general retailers will have everything you need.

This project necessarily brings electricity in close contact with metal, and uses an electrical appliance (the lights) in a method for which it was not intended. You must follow all the safety precautions in this instructable. Even so, you do this at your own risk, if you have any concerns about building or using this device, please buy a commercial product like the Packtite or hire a professional Pest Control Operator instead.

Absolutely brilliant! People often have items that can't be treated in the dryer or with insecticides. Most places recommend putting the items in a plastic bag and using the heat or cold (depending on the season) to kill the bed bugs. Unfortunately, we can't always get the temperatures hot enough (or cold enough) to get the job done. This is a wonderful solution. Very impressive.

I have now added instructions for grounding the can. If you have already built one of these, PLEASE look at the new instructions and add a ground. It only took a few minutes to do. This is for your safety, do it before you next use it!

Also some experiences:

I am mostly using ONE strand of lights and getting the air temperature in the can to 100-120F. That's still enough to get the luggage contents to 125F. The temperatures I was using earlier (150F-175F) were melting some of the plastic parts on my luggage.

GCFI will work fine with only 2 prong and no ground. GFCI does not use the ground to detect fault. a GFCI trips when the hot wire current and neutral wire current are not equal. when a ground fault happens, current goes from the hot and straight to ground, causing more current to go through hot than neutral, and the GFCI trips.

Actually you guys are both right... Originally I was thinking like Dan39 on this.

After thinking some more I realized that if a bulb breaks or if the insulation on the lights fails, and if the can subsequently becomes electrified, then the can could actually stay electrified and the GFCI won't trip immediately. Then whoever happens to touch the can would become the path to earth and THEN the GFCI would trip.

It would probably hurt a bit and probably wouldn't be fatal to a healthy adult, but they keyword here is probably. I will update the instructable later this afternoon to include a ground for the can.

Wouldn't it make sense for all airports, hotels, trains and bus stations to have some sort of mechanism, sterilizer, etc., to make all the luggage and cargo go through before you can arrive/board and/or off-load/leave? Something that would work quickly? Seems like if they can invent machines for the TSA to force us through like cattle to check us out at airports and since they scan luggage anyway, someone should invent a bedbug death ray.

I don't know how long bedbugs can live in the absence of oxygen and a quick google doesn't tell me. My gut feel is that it could be quite a long time... bedbugs can live for 18 months without food, I have to think they could survive without respirating for a while.

You'd also have to consider whether CO2 would kill any eggs that might have been laid in your luggage, my guess is probably not.

You're on the right track though. Is there any other gas that could be used to gas bedbugs to death? Vikane gas has been shown to do it (it's the same gas used by professional pest control operators when they "tent" a house for termites)... It's also quite deadly to humans as well unfortunately.

Can anyone think of an effective and safe way to gas bedbugs to death?

Good retort. The eggs...those damn eggs! I'd imagine they would survive, too. Those eggs might as well be acorns considering the resilience of the properties of the eggs. Alcohol resistant, really? damn.

But who knows, I'm sure there has to be some case studies which yield the appropriate information regarding low temperatures and lack of oxygen...one has to think about what makes an egg germinate...ie....what triggers it's birth?

Two years is a long, long time for anything to lay dormant. I guess in comparison to the cicada insect, it's nothing..

I don't know how long bedbugs can live in the absence of oxygen either but I don't think ability to live without food equates into the ability to live without respiration. I've thought for years, but have yet to try it, that dry ice might be a good, safe way to kill off flea infestations.

All you need to kill bedbugs is to shoot the heck out of the mattress with a squirt bottle filled with regular 70% isopropyl alcohol. Do this when you are absolutely sure that there is no open flame from a gas pilot light from a gas hot water heater, stove or dryer in the house and that no one will be lighting up for smoking, torching, or gas-soldering. Best way is to shoot it in the morning and then go to work or out to do errands, then come back a few hours later and open up the place and air it out - with a fan if need be. Don't stay inside with the concentrated fumes. You will get used to them and think everything is OK when it isn't (where your lung health is concerned). Stay outside until the level of the fumes abates. For bad infestations, you will want to repeat this in a couple of days when any eggs hatch. The egg coating is resilent and resistant to the alcohol, but the hatched bugs, aren't. We figured that our infestation came from a large stuffed animal purchased at a common retailer. Our landlord turned us on to using isopropyl alcohol in a squirt gun to shoot mosquitos and flies out of the air, kill cockroaches, and to treat bedbug infestations. I hate to say it, but shooting the flies and mosquitos is almost like a video arcade game. You just have to use restraint and not go wild and risk shooting someone, or over food or important receipts or papers. The worst thing you could do is sanitize your house where it hits. Personally, I use an old X-14 bathroom cleaner squirt bottle with variable spray-to-stream head because the rubber O-ring on the plunger is made stronger to handle the harsher chemical, so the alcohol doesn't affect it. You can adjust the 'spread' of the stream with the adjustable head so you can use a 'wide' pattern if there are a bunch of mosquitos or flies bothering you, or you can narrow it down to a strem to pick one off your arm or the table - kinda like a shotgun theory, I guess.

Just want to add my 2 cents.... Diatomaceous Earth (DE) is miraculous on fleas!! I took my 2 cats to the vet, and 2 weeks later discovered that I had brought home an infestation of biblical proportions! 2 years later, I still have scars from flea bites around my ankles! But the DE is fantastic. Food-grade, non-toxic, dessicates any and all insects (fleas, chiggers, bedbugs, etc) can be left on the floor indefinitely, or vacuumed every 3 days and re-applied, and best of all cheap! I paid $16.00 for a 2Kg (4.4 Lbs)bag, (about the size of a medium bed pillow) and I still have some left.

DE is a truely amazing thing to behold. There are some cautions to include: a) Apply With Care Because its a sharp micro particulate, and it can suspend in the air where we then inhale it into our delicate lungs. Humans must be cautious to spray it or use it without combining it with some kind of liquid or moist media such as oil or food, etc. Combine DE and water with a sprayer, is the best way to apply, it keeps the DE from being in the air and then you inhaling it. There are tons of sprayers you can get, usually on the same websites or amazon. Some are specially made for cracks and crevaces. Application is key with DE.

b) Clean-Up after applying DE can be just as toxic to lungs, as you can stir up the dust again, avoid vaccuming it up, use a damp mop. Avoid applying it on a carpet unless you can cover it with a drop cloth or avoid the room for a while, etc. Its like moon dust, and will stay suspended for some time.

b) Consumption - internal, be sure to get "food grade"... and if/when you take it, best to also add bentonite clay and also fiber, such as psyllium and flax seed, with AT LEAST 10 oz water with the DE mix, and 10 oz afterwards. A good idea is to chase that with probiotics.

It is true. Google the stuff and you'll learn more about it. It WORKS! It is finer than flour but it's microscopic sharp jagged edges cut into the critter's exoskeleton and it's body liquids leak out, causing it to die. I got rid of a house full of fleas this past summer with it. It's also ingestible by humans (get food grade de) and kills internal parasites. Great stuff.

Couldn't you use the tumble drier at the launderette for clothing and bedding items? Also you could add a CPU fan to circulate the air inside the container... Another saftey feature would be to add an Earth/ ground to the metal can incase you accidentally leave liquid in the luggage.

Tumble-drying is recognized as an effective method of killing bedbugs, and there is some evidence that a hot wash will do it as well.

However there are some things that can't be washed and dried, like the suitcase itself!

Since bedbug behavior is to eat and then hide, the natural folds and crevices in the average piece of luggage are an attractive hiding place for them.

If you think you've been staying in a location that has bedbugs (or might have bedbugs), I think you need to decontaminate your luggage as well as the contents.

Final thought/warning on using a public facility like a laundrette or laundromat to decontaminate your stuff: if doing so, PLEASE make sure that you don't let any bedbugs loose in the facility. If you do that, and one of them hitches a ride home with someone else, then you just contaminated someone else, and that person could easily bring their infested bedding to the same laundromat that you use...

HOT dryers....yes, This is a very important point folks. Here's the rub:the new "eco" dryers and washers, are being built not to get the water orair very hot, to save energy. And what this seems to be doing is a) rendering dryers and washers ineffective in the fight against bedbugs/lice/etc. but also in some cases b) giving cotton mites or other bugs a nice cozy place to reproduce, making the problem worse.

My sister is a pharmd, and they tried EVERYTHING to get rid of their lice. All sorts of nasty chemicals. With professionals involved. With MD's involved.With an entemologist. She did the homework on the dyers. They actually installed an upgrade to make their washer and dryer hotter. Hot water should be over 140 I believe to be effective. I no longer use the dryer and hang all my stuff outside. The UV from the sun kills things. Dryers or washers with silver in them can help.

My first thought when building the first instructable in this range was to try to find some donor appliance that had a thermostat in the 150F to 175F range, but I really couldn't find one; room heaters have thermostats up to about 80 or 90 degrees; hotplates and slow cookers are more up in the 200+ range.

After building the first one and realizing that the amount of power needed to heat the can was a lot less than I expected, I put the thermostat way down on the 'optional list". Given that the amount of heat this puts out (350-375 Watts) is about a quarter of what an average hairdryer puts out, and we're dealing with a pretty large volume and mass of stuff to be heated, the rise of temperature is going to be pretty slow, and I chose to monitor it manually.

heating coils in an oven, or toaster oven, or electric griddle) should go below 175 with a rheostat, you gotta experiment though. The glass envelopes are nicer since they contain the element from touching skin if you have an accident. You still get burned, but, open elements are way more destructive..

What about a food dehydrator?I ran mine for an hour or so, and it crept up to almost 170 f.It has no thermostat, but I imagine some dehydrators do.The temperature could be adjusted by changing the amount of ventilation, but that might create a condition of uneven temperature.

I fergit about theose gizmo's (I have one) but you could not put a bag in it. And the temp range is about the high end of a dehydrator. I had plans for making one and it used (wait for it) light bulbs. One could rig up a simple rheostat or a triac circuit to limit the heat of several lamps with a circuit to a themostat. (not by me I have engineer friend I would ask, I can build I do not design).

I think the author is dead on with the lamps. There are other items but lamps seem safer and just easier to deal with, and trouble shooting a bad filiment is easy it either lights up or it doesn't.

Making a circuit that controls the voltage to the bulbs in relation to temperature is what is really needed. Not turn them on/off . If you find a crappy element dead food dehydrator , and pull the thermostat control it might work.

I doubt my bud has time but, I will ask him if he can make one up, if so I will post it.

And

7 or 4 watt lamps on a loop are way way better then the plans I had for the food dehydrator since they used 2-4 big lamps. The little ones, while more expensive, let you string out the heaters like a heat coil in a toaster. they heat more evenly.

This is not my baliwick but look around for people tossing electric dryers , cause the motor died. Big giant nichrome wire elements. If you have a waste transfer place nearby go ask them if you can canabialize few dryers/ovens. If you put a few in parallel you can get the temperature down. But after reading your whole article and thinking about it; I like your Xmas lights, a simple and elegant solution. You can insulate the thing and even put some right inside the luggage. 451 degrees is the temp of spontaneous combustion I have laid paper across 100 watt bulbs and not gotten ignition, I did get charring once though.

There are places that sell appliance parts , but there technical staff may not have answers. They are used to a part number and then read a spec, not the reverse. Open coils would force you to make a double drum for safety. Nope your idea with the lights is a good one, the only other option is making a false floor and and placing the coils beneath it and then a set of stand offs (grill) to be sure the unit never touches the suitcase.

this is one http://www.repairclinic.com. I have bought many parts from them, and learned how to fix a few things as well.

I haven't thought this through very hard, and I hate to discredit a very creative solution to a nasty problem (I just spent the day taking precautions against a few bedbugs we found in our house), but...

Couldn't you just put your suitcase in a large cardboard box, cut a small hole in the top, stick a hair dryer in there for 15 minutes? 120 degrees for 10 minutes will kill the evil, but I can't imagine the hair dryer could get up to 451 degrees or whatever the combustion point of the suitcase materials. Could it?

Firstly, if you have seen bedbugs, CALL A LICENSED PEST CONTROL OPERATOR RIGHT AWAY. Most people cannot rid their dwellings of bedbugs on their own. If you can nip the problem in the bud today, you avoid having to throw away half your stuff and sealing the rest of it up for 18 months. It is really that bad, my Mom had to do it a few years ago.

This instructable is not going to help you if you already have an active bedbug infestation except POSSIBLY as part of an overall pest-control strategy laid out by a professional.

As for the box-and-a-hairdryer idea, if you can make it work safely, go for it. One problem you might have is heating up the inside of the box too fast for the heat to penetrate to the core of the luggage... definitely use the hairdryer on its lowest setting until you know how hot you are making it. Part of my idea of using the steel can was that if you do accidentally set fire to your luggage, then the fire is contained within the can at least and hopefully denied oxygen to keep burning.

A thought I had which combines both ideas would be to cut a hole in the can and place the nozzle from the hairdryer into the hole, hopefully keeping the hairdryer in its normal operating range while still heating the contents of the can. The can wouldn't cut off oxygen to a burning suitcase, but it would still be contained.

Perhaps even simpler would be to use an unadulterated galvanized can and heat the whole thing from the outside, for example, with a fan heater directed at it, or with a hotplate under it. I haven't tried either one of these, but if you can make one of them work, please make a new Instructable and cross-link from here!

Bedbugs are notoriously resistant to pesticides, that's part of the reason why people are so freaked out about them. They are really hard to kill. There are six methods that I'm aware of:

- Heat (as in this instructable) - EXTREME cold, for a period of days or weeks - DDT (banned in most countries, and there is some evidence that they are resistant to it anyway) - Vikane gas (which is really deadly to humans too, should only be used by licensed pest control operators) - Mechanical damage, for example, with diatomaceous earth which cuts them open at a microscopic level - Starvation - but they can survive 18 months without a meal...

Pros: It would mean less variability and possibly having to watch the internal temperature of the can less. You might be able to use one less string of lights.

Cons: Cost. 2 strings of lights are only to use about 4 cents of electricity per hour of operation, it would be hard to justify spending several dollars on insulation for it.

I'm pretty sure that it would require fewer lights with an insulated can. If anyone tries insulating their can, please post a comment back here with the amount of lights required to heat their can to the 150-175F range. Thanks!

Diatomaceous Earth is the fossilized remains of microscopic aquatic algae called Diatomes similar to chalk in appearance and is mined and crushed to a fine powder. These individual cell remains are extremely hard (and sharp), the have a hardness rating of 7 where a diamond is 9. If being used to eradicate insects, it works by the extremely sharp edges lacerating the exoskeleton of an insect moving over it and then the absorbent properties of the powder cause the lipids in the insect to dry out and thereby kill the insect by dehydration.

very interesting "ible". I think if you drilled a hole near the top of the can and then used a hacksaw to make it a U shape you could slice a rubber grommet in half and protect the electric cord while also not having to dedicate a cord for just the bug cooker, another trick might be a hotwater tank insulation blanket wrapped around the outside of the can to slow down the radiant heat thru the metal. and then the mind starts running, if you have more luggage on a regular basis a VERY large icechest could hold 2 or 3 suitcases, an old refrigerator or freezer box would hold even more or even a large box built from foil lined faom insulation sheets... wow.. I have to stop thinking bfore I write a book... Thank You for the mental stimulation !

I like the way you think...BUT,Heating up a fridge, freezer or cooler could cause the insulation to expand ruining said item depending on what kind of insulating foam was used. I have personally experienced this. So make sure what you're using is either expendable or insulated with something compatible with heat.